


The Sky Cries for You

by Slowscribe



Category: Klonoa
Genre: Angst, Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-06-27
Updated: 2012-04-21
Packaged: 2017-10-20 18:57:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/216066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slowscribe/pseuds/Slowscribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil. After defeating the King of Sorrow, Klonoa wishes he had another way to save the one who called out to him for help. (Warning for mentioning death that happens in-game.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Retrospect

**Author's Note:**

> I just replayed Klonoa 2 the other day, and I really wanted to write something fluffy for Klonoa and the King of Sorrow because the bit at the end is just so sad. I have at least four chapters planned out for this, yet I can't say I know exactly where I'm going. Well, for this kind of fic I think I'll just write until I run out of words. I'm not sure what else to do.
> 
> This part takes place during the last boss battle of Klonoa 2, and fills in a little bit between Klonoa ringing the bell and what happens to the King of Sorrow at the end. Read on!
> 
> Oh, yeah and even though I think it was kind of clear the King of Sorrow dies at the end of the game it is mentioned so that's what the warning is about if you were wondering. :P

How can sorrow possibly be defeated? It wasn’t something Klonoa actually stopped and thought about during the journey to the middle of that desolate kingdom, too busy just trying to stay alive. Even if he had, how could he have possibly anticipated what he would find there?

None of that mattered at first, as he found himself caught in an illusion with no end, forced to fight one of the King of Sorrow’s puppets before he could be overwhelmed. Then the mere proximity to the other elements, which Klonoa had hoped would somehow help the miserable creature in front of him, seemed to push him over the edge. With a scream the King of Sorrow had gone completely out of control, smashing a crater in the floor with the shield that formed around him.

There was no time to think about the voice he had heard calling to him for help so long, or about what he had found answering that call, the half-mad personification of the world’s forgotten sorrow. Not until he had broken through that last barrier to the miserable creature he had been fighting was there even an instant to think.

“He... lp me... please.”

There had never really been any question of what he would do. Of course Klonoa had to help. He let the Bell of Sorrow ring out at last, its chime shimmering and pure as a waterfall of tears.

It was in that moment, as the bell’s voice filled the air, that the power sustaining the King of Sorrow seemed to fail at last. Pained red eyes slid closed, and he fell into the crater his powers had created.

Klonoa never stopped to think about what came next, either. He dove in on reckless instinct, catching the falling child of Sorrow in open arms.

That small body felt so frail in his arms, a bundle of stick-thin, shivering limbs that went limp in Klonoa’s embrace. Harsh little gasps that sounded almost like faint cries of pain were the only thing Klonoa could hear over the echos of the Bell of Sorrow that still reverberated through the whole kingdom.

“I have you,” Klonoa promised, not knowing how else to soothe.

There was enough power to tear down the world coiled up in the body he was holding, but all Klonoa could feel now was just how fragile the King of Sorrow truly was.

Klonoa carried his small burden out of the crater, having to steady himself one-handed as the feeble arms that finally moved to cling to him were too weak to support even the weight of such a tiny body. When he finally reached the top, Klonoa shifted to hold the King of Sorrow properly with both arms, but finally realized that there was nowhere for them to go. The body he held was becoming lighter and lighter, until he could hardly feel the weight of it anymore.

The King of Sorrow was fading away, even as Klonoa knelt and held his frail bundle across his lap. Later Klonoa would think that maybe it was because this last, lonely, child of the Kingdom of Sorrow was made more of pent-up loneliness and sadness than flesh and blood. Maybe ringing the bell had released that sorrow into the rest of the world, and left nothing to sustain the child-king.

Or maybe it was because for the first time he had made this isolated child of sorrow feel something other than sadness, or loneliness, or despair. Klonoa never really thought about how to defeat sorrow, just done what seemed right. Because of that he had found the one way to defeat sorrow, not by attacking head-on, not by locking it away to forget, but by embracing it with his whole heart.


	2. In the Morning Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place the morning after the very end of Klonoa 2. Direct continuation of the first chapter, but then it would have to be. Just a little in-between cahpter, so expect more from the next one! For now, read on!

Klonoa awoke to a pillow damp with his own tears, and the last words of a distant whisper in his ears.

For a second he had to gasp around the painful lump in his throat as his heart ached with loneliness, a mere echo of a sorrow deep enough to destroy a whole world if left without comfort.

It was an artefact of the dream, the vision, he had been drawn into. A world that was breaking around the edges, too many of its people forever immersing themselves in a single emotion until the intensity blotted out all else. It was a world that had forcefully turned a blind eye to sorrow, and in so doing had only caused that sorrow to build unto the breaking point. For the young Dream Traveler it had been a real world, if not his own.

The morning sun blinded him for a moment, but he knew without being able to see the room that he had truly woken from his journey. The waking mind always tries to dismiss dream in the rush of a new day, and even dream travelers are not immune. For all that Lunatea was real while he was there, it couldn’t be real in the same way here and now. Already the memories of his dream felt a little blurry at the edges. Even Klonoa, who never wanted to forget, caught himself losing details of his own journeys sometimes.

For a second Klonoa closed his eyes tight, clutching the ring he never let go of in his sleep. He held those precious images and feelings to himself as firmly as he had held the King of Sorrow in his arms.

“I will never forget you,” he whispered fiercely against his pillow.

Lolo... Popka... Leorina... he never wanted to forget any of them, but how could he ever forget Sorrow? After all, sorrow was waking from each dream, each world. Sorrow was leaving behind precious friends he could never hope to see again, could never even explain to those around him how real they were. That pain was a mark of how important they were to him, all of them.

Somewhere on the edge of his mind, just before he woke, Klonoa thought he might have heard that lonely voice one last time. The voice that had called out to him for help over and over, the voice of the fragile-seeming embodiment of sorrow. If he’d heard the words that had been spoken to him, he already couldn’t remember them. Still, he had to answer.

“You won’t ever be lost again,” Klonoa promised. “I have you.”


	3. In-between

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. This whole part took me so long to write. I actually started this fic almost a year ago, so I even had to go back and partially re-write the bits with Luna (My Little Pony), now that she's finally shown up again.
> 
> This part has a lot of random little cameos. I've been trying to stick to characters from video games with mainly antrho casts. You can play spot the reference if you like. I don't think it's a proper crossover, since it's just like "so-and-so gets mentioned for one paragraph! And now they're gone." If anyone knows a game that I should bring in some characters from drop me a line! (It's a recommendation for me, 'cause I love these kinds of games!) There are a couple of exceptions. (Luna and Chris are from shows, of course. I really wanted to have Canard from Mighty Ducks TAS, because you just know he's got a room in the temporal anomaly wing. Maybe I'll put him in later, but the other two were kinda plot-important and he wasn't.) I also have a couple OCs running around to make things interesting.
> 
> This is so long I have to split it into two parts! Part two of the In-between will be up in a week or two, probably.

  
Something was buzzing in Klonoa’s ear, a whisper on the edge of his waking mind in the moment before he opened his eyes each day. Every time he woke to a new world, and a new quest waiting for him, he could hear something in the void between dreams and waking calling to him.  
  
It was familiar and yet he couldn’t seem to figure out why. Klonoa would sometimes stay perfectly still even after waking, eyes squeezed firmly closed, and tried to will himself back to that in-between place so he could pick up enough of that whisper to make it form actual words. It didn’t help. Nothing seemed to bring him closer to making any sense of it.  
  
At least, nothing helped until one adventure, when he got into a little trouble fighting a particularly huge monster.  
  
He didn’t have trouble defeating the giant itself, that was a standard adventurer thing. But the shockwave as the giant finally fell shook the entire temple down to its foundations, knocking Klonoa clean off of his feet.  
  
He lay where he fell for a moment, exhausted and aching all over from the scattered hits he had taken during the fight. As he watched, the twisted bulk of what had once been a rain-bringing dragon, and had lately been a furious giant that blotted out the very sun, dissolved into soft mist. In only a moment it was as if a fog had been lifted from the whole world.  
  
Another call answered, another world saved. Klonoa left out a laugh at the satisfied exhaustion of a job well done, and started to get back to his feet.  
  
There was a low, distant rumble all around him. He had thought was just a ringing in his ears at first, but it was growing louder and louder. All at once he realized that it was the sound of stonework coming undone. The temple was collapsing around him, shaken by that final battle. The stone ceiling was breaking apart above him even as Klonoa scrambled to escape.  
  
He never felt the impact, never an instant of fatal pain to accompany the crushing blow. All he knew was darkness, silence, as if his world had come to an abrupt stop.  
  
Klonoa found himself floating in a void, empty and alone. It took several seconds for him to even feel, in his disorientation, that he was laying face-down on something cool and spongy. His face was pressed into it so that he couldn’t draw breath.  
  
Klonoa rolled over, took a deep breath, and slowly let it out again. Whatever had happened, he still seemed to be all in one piece. Even the small wounds and the places that had ached after his most recent adventure weren’t troubling him any more.  
  
With a little effort, Klonoa braced his hands in the spongy mass under him and pushed himself upright. The ground didn’t seem quite solid under him, but it was somehow able to support his weight. It was like resting on a cloud.  
  
There was a stillness, a vast feeling of open space all around him. Klonoa felt his way along as his eyes adjusted. Even the faintest scrap of light was enough for his completely dilated cat’s eyes, but there was nothing to see. He soon found the edge where his little fragment of world dropped away into a nothingness so deep he couldn’t make out anything below, and followed it in a rough circle.  
  
Halfway around exploring the boundaries of his cloudy platform, Klonoa finally saw the source of the faint light. Something was shining in the distance, like the thinnest sickle of the waning moon.  
  
The light was enough for Klonoa to make out several more little islands scattered about the one he had woken on. It was even enough for him so scramble from one to the next, avoiding the seemingly bottomless void in between. Whenever he had to flap his ears to get a little extra distance, the wind he kicked up whipped through the steep valleys and sent an eerie howl back to echo around him. Klonoa was in no hurry to explore the dark spaces below.  
  
With no other obvious landmarks, Klonoa moved towards the light. As he got closer the thin sliver of light started to seem like a physical thing, hanging much closer to the ground than any moon ought to. Just beneath the shining slice of moon he could make out a small bundle. Each was connected to the other by a thin beam of an almost glittering darkness that hurt his eyes when he stopped and tried to make it out clearly.  
  
The shape finally resolved into a creature curled up in the dark. A little pony the color of darkness in darkness like the void of a new moon, with only a single mark on her flank that glowed like a perfect reflection of the moon shining close overhead. She was resting with her forelegs tucked neatly under her, her head and neck up in a pose of elegant alertness. In the dark it took Klonoa a moment to realize that she had small wings folded against her back, and a horn the spiraled gracefully from her forehead.  
  
She watched Klonoa approach in silence. It wasn’t until he paused on her platform, that she chose to speak.  
  
“Why dost thou approach us?” she asked. Her voice didn’t match the fragile, childish look about her. The sheer power of it blew Klonoa’s ears back and unsettled his fur. She sounded old, centuries old, like an ailing goddess. Klonoa had met a few of those.  
  
“I think I’m lost,” Klonoa tried to explain. “Can you tell me where this is?”  
  
“Thou hast been here many times,” she told him. “In the In-between.”  
  
Had he? It didn’t seem familiar at all, and even with a lack of recognizable landmarks he should remember the sheer strangeness of this place.  
  
“We do not forget. But you little _transient_ things cannot seem to remember.” There was a touch of bitterness, of wistfulness, in her voice now. She wasn’t angry, but... Klonoa felt a little wary just the same. No matter what form they took, scorned goddesses tended to smite.  
  
Her form itself was odd enough. She was smaller even than Klonoa, but gave off the impression of size. Maybe it was just the moon-like thing hovering over both of them. Klonoa couldn’t seem to see it properly when he was this close, though its light still let him make out what little there was to see. He was fairly sure he wasn’t imagining the oddness of her eyes. Clear eyes that had looked down on a whole world like the cold sky at twilight.  
  
“Where should I go from here?” Klonoa asked. The same little island-platforms dotted the void on all sides, all looking more or less the same.  
  
“Thou art not returning?” When startled, she seemed more like a child than a goddess. Before Klonoa could ask her how he could return she had composed herself, and had another answer for him. “We shall endure your company for the moment, for the light road shall open soon.”  
  
Almost as soon as she had said the words, a glimmer of light in the distance caught his eye. At first just a single star on the horizon, it grew larger and brighter with each second until it was no longer a single point of light but a ribbon curling towards them from far away. Klonoa let out a cry of surprise to see that light widening and flattening until it became a winding road through the void. The edge dipped down to touch their platform, then kept going, unravelling on and on out into the darkness.  
  
Klonoa hopped onto the strange road of light, testing to see if it would hold under his weight.  
  
“Let’s go!” Klonoa was back in his element. He had a path now, and that was all he needed to start a new adventure.  
  
“No.” Klonoa looked back in surprise, to find the little pony hadn’t stirred at all. “We are still waiting.”  
  
It seemed like a very strange place to be waiting, but if someone wanted to find her, they would only need to follow the moon. Klonoa gave her a nod of agreement and set off on his own road.  
  
The road was letting off a low, warm light that helped him see more of the floating platforms in all directions, but it still didn’t throw enough light into the void below for Klonoa to even guess at where the bottom might be. He would just have to keep from falling.  
  
As the glow opened up the world for Klonoa’s keen eyes, he began to see he wasn’t as alone as he had thought. An aircraft went roaring by, following the light road from above and kicking up a wave of pressure that threw Klonoa flat against the road for a minute before it passed.  
  
While he was picking himself up, Klonoa found the aircraft wasn’t the only thing overhead. Something he took for a red, two-headed beast coasted down onto the road just ahead of him, and hit the ground running. Klonoa had just enough time to see that it was actually a bird-like mech with a young dog and cat at the controls. An instant later something whipped by just behind him, and Klonoa turned quickly enough to get a glimpse of wings and a scaly purple tail before it was gone, disappearing in a ripple of darkness that hung in the not-air of the void. A dragon?  
  
It was getting crowded out here. Klonoa clambered back to his feet and started running again.  
  
By now he could see where the light road originated, and where it was leading him. There was a structure rising out of the void ahead of him, stretching down into the darkness and up past the sky, father than Klonoa could possibly see. It was a rounded tower, but one so massive that as he reached it the grey stone seemed more like a wall stretching out to both sides.  
  
The light road led right up to a wide balcony, a landing platform of sorts. In the tower, above the balcony, there were several arches that led to wide, flat areas. The aircraft that had flown over him on the road was now resting in one of them.  
  
Finally he could see where the light road was coming from. A lantern, or at least it looked like an old-fashioned lantern, held by a gaunt, silver-furred badger in pale grey robes. Many loops of tattered, rough-edged bandages wrapped around the badger’s eyes to hide them.  
  
The light poured out of that lantern like trickling water until it hit the stone floor of the balcony. From there it flattened and spread, stretching off of the balcony and away to form the road Klonoa had been running on. It made about as much sense as any other dream, he supposed.  
  
The badger’s face turned blindly towards him as he stepped gingerly from the pooling light to worn stone. The ground here felt more solid than the cloud platforms, at least.  
  
“Klonoa! What are you doing so deep in the In-between?”  
  
“I think I’m lost. Wait, how do you know my name?” How had the badger even recognized him? Could he see through his bandages?  
  
“You’ve been here many times before, though you rarely come this far in. Ah, but you won’t remember, I’m sure!” The badger gave him a wry smile. “For travelers like yourself, this is a place between worlds and times where they are needed. You can’t die in a ‘dream,’ but when you’re knocked out of a world you’re visiting this is where you land. You won’t remember this place when you leave.”  
  
Klonoa couldn’t have said if he had heard this before, but he certainly got the feeling the badger had given the same explanation many, many times to many travelers.  
  
There were others besides the badger already scattered around on the platform. Some were heading inside, having arrived ahead of Klonoa, while others looked as if they were waiting for something. There were two ladies nearby, a svelte purple cat talking to a brightly-furred fox wearing a police badge as a ‘dog-tag’ around her throat. The fox looked irritated, glaring out into the void even as her ears swivelled to listen to her companion. To the other side was an extremely strange looking boy, sitting with his legs swinging out over the edge of the balcony. He had a messy auburn mane, but no fur anywhere on his body.  
  
“Is everyone here dream travelers?” Klonoa hadn’t crossed paths with anyone like himself in a long time. So there were other people here who would understand what it felt like, spending so much of his life in worlds that seemed so real, yet disappeared each time he woke?  
  
“Not everyone. Many come here in their dreams, even ones who aren’t meant to be travelers.” The badger nodded to indicate the strange furless boy as he said this. “If I remember, you never stay here long before jumping back into a dream,” he added.  
  
“I don’t know how to get back!” Klonoa protested.  
  
“Now that is strange. You should have had the option to continue when you first arrived here.” Klonoa got the feeling he was being scrutinized, though he still couldn’t see the badger’s eyes. “You’ll want to step out of the road for a moment.”  
  
When Klonoa did take a step away, something whipped by him so fast that it tossed up his ears in its wake. A blur of blue and black. No, it was two blurs, moving so close together that they had seemed like one entity as they whipped past.  
  
Two hedgehogs, Klonoa realized once they screeched to a stop on the balcony. One was shock-blue with spiked quills that stood out down his back. The other was black with his spikes turning up like wicked claws highlighted in red. The black hedgehog had his arms crossed angrily under the tuft of white fur in the middle of his chest, while the blue one laughed uproariously at him.  
  
“You’re too slow!” the blue hedgehog teased.  
  
If that was what passed for ‘slow’ around here...  
  
As Klonoa watched, the furless boy deserted his post and practically threw himself at the blue hedgehog to hug him, without the slightest care for his spiked quills. The blue hedgehog didn’t seem to be caught off guard by this, catching the boy mid-hug with a joyful greeting.  
  
And that wasn’t the only reunion. Moments later a third hedgehog arrived, not speeding along the light road, but flying through the void, surrounded by a blue-green aura that disappeared when his feet touched the smooth stone of the platform. He looked rather different from the other two, and not just because of his pale, silvery color. His halo of gravity-defying quills were so wide and soft that next to the other two he didn’t even look like he could prick someone.  
  
The third hedgehog only seemed to notice one person on the balcony, as if the rest of them weren’t even there. The purple cat, who had stepped away from her conversation to meet him.  
  
“You’re... I...” Words seemed to fail him, except for a single whisper, “I’m so sorry.”  
  
She cut right through his hesitation by putting her arm around him and pulling him to rest against her shoulder with the air of an older sister comforting her brother. “What am I going to do with you?”  
  
“Is this always-” Klonoa looked around at the grey badger, a tiny part of his heart already hoping that this was a place of reunions, somewhere he might possibly meet even a few of the countless precious friends he’d had to leave behind in the course of his travels. He found the badger staring hard out into the void, his expression set as frigid and solid as a statue. He might have been a stone sentinel standing there. “What is it?”  
  
“They won’t remember.”  
  
“How can they not remember? I always remember my dreams! You don’t just forget something that important!”  
  
The shadow of an indulgent smile only irritated Klonoa’s temper further. “No one can remember this place. If you stay here long enough you just might remember it when you return. But when you wake...”  
  
“But why would it have to be-”  
  
The badger interrupted Klonoa, his voice strong over the sound of tearful reunions. “There’s someone you’ll want to see. In the medical bay, three flights up, temporal anomaly wing.” A second’s pause, and then, “She’s waiting for you, Shadow.”  
  
Apparently this message was aimed at the black hedgehog. He had a frown of deep distrust that never left his face, but he did turn his back on the others and stalked inside. Even when he wasn’t running so fast as to be a blur, he was gone in the blink of an eye.  
  
“Why would you tell him to go meet someone he won’t remember?”  
  
The badger didn’t answer. Before Klonoa could question him further another hedgehog popped out from where she had been hiding in his shadow. This one was perfect black from head to toe, with incredibly long quills that hung down like graceful corkscrews.  
  
“Why didn’t you let me show him where it is?” she cried in a pouty child’s voice. “I love seeing Shadow happy.”  
  
“I’d like you to show Klonoa around instead, Mary.”  
  
“Oh?” Mary peeked over at Klonoa and smiled brightly. She crossed behind the badger, and in the instant Klonoa couldn’t see her she had transformed from a hedgehog into a cabbit. She was still jet-black, but curly quills had been replaced with impossibly soft-looking fur. Her long ears were tied together at the top of her head so that they hung down together down her back in a ponytail, which was almost stranger than her sudden change in species. That actually looked kind of painful.  
  
Klonoa stepped back in surprise, only to have the cabbit girl catch him by the arm before he could stumble too close to the edge.  
  
“What just... Who are you?”  
  
“Don’t mind Mary. She’s made up of wishful thinking, so she tends to change a lot.”  
  
Klonoa could swear that badger was laughing at him.  
  
“Come on! I’ll show you all around and you’ll meet lots of nice people and we can probably find someone to figure out why you’re stuck, if you still want to go home,” Mary chirped. She dragged Klonoa inside with her, in spite of his half-formed protests.  
  
There was an unornamented tunnel leading from the balcony into the tower itself. Klonoa stumbled along, unable to retrieve his arm. Her fur was changing color, so gradually he couldn’t be sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him, but before he knew it black fur had changed to pale blue patterned with fine darker stripes. It was unnerving to watch.  
  
“How did we all get here?” Klonoa asked, trying to make sense of the place. Even dreams made their own sort of sense, usually. “Are we all dreaming? What about that little pony out there?”  
  
“You mean Luna?” Suddenly when Mary turned her eyes on him they weren’t just bright, but like twin luminous moons. How could he have not noticed that before? “She’s waiting for her sister to call her home again. She never comes to the tower.” Mary smiled sadly to herself as she talked. “You know, she told me where she was from no one wanted her night. But she waxes and wanes like a real moon, and lets us know time passes even here. It’s so much more beautiful here since she came.”  
  
That sounded so sad... Klonoa couldn’t completely believe he wasn’t here for a reason as a dream traveler. Even if this was a place for happy reunions, there was something melancholy about the place that nagged at him.  
  
As that thought occurred to him, Klonoa felt something ripple through him. It was a voice on the edge of hearing, a thought on the edge of consciousness. He almost didn’t have time to be aware of it before it was gone.  
  
“Did you hear that?” Klonoa asked, though ‘hear’ wasn’t quite right, he didn’t know what else to call it.  
  
“Oh yes. The canteen is right through here. Sometimes it gets a little noisy!”  
  
And with that they rounded a corner into a huge mess hall. The ceiling arched up away from them, the better to amplify the cacophony of voices that filled the space. There was no single coherent theme to the place. Tables of varying sizes and shapes were scattered through the room, with chairs to accommodate almost any species. There were clusters of long couches, and even dips in the floor with seats carved out of the sides. A bar ran along almost the full length of one wall, raising and lowering to serve customers of different heights. The main portion of it jutted out nearly to the middle of the room in a long, narrow horseshoe, before returning to the wall again.  
  
The canteen, while not nearly filled to capacity, held an amazingly diverse number of people. Many of them looked as if they couldn’t possibly live in the same reality, let alone the same world. For a moment Klonoa could only stare around himself in awe.  
  
At the bar was a species Klonoa had never seen before, though this man wasn’t as strange as the furless boy had been. He had short tawny fur and oversized pointed ears that stood out from his head. As Klonoa watched he paid for his drink with a handful of bolts and turned back to his companions at the bar, a blue-feathered falcon and a muscular young fox, both in matching jackets. A little father along was a whip-like racoon, idly twirling a hooked cane in one hand. When the falcon gave him a sharp warning to ‘watch where you put that thing,’ the racoon gave him a charmingly insincere smile in return.  
  
There were other strange match-ups scattered throughout the room. At one low table a dreadlocked echidna was arm-wrestling a manically-grinning bandicoot. A nearby table had a young fox with two tails, an impeccably neat turtle in a bow tie, and frog wearing the same uniform as the fox and falcon at the bar all pouring over a mess of blueprints. Klonoa could hear snatches of their conversation, though none of it made any sense. Something about ‘chaos energy,’ and ‘plasma engine,’ and ‘ectoplasmic residue.’  
  
“Oh no, I told them to stop messing with the gravitational polarity fields!” Mary cried, apparently noticing the three at the same time Klonoa did. “Their technologies aren’t mutually compatible at all!”  
  
That made even less sense. When he turned to tell her that, he was taken aback to find she’d turned into a lizard in the interim. She was covered in shining golden scales now, with a paler, creamy belly. That threw Klonoa for a loop once again.  
  
“When did you... ?” he asked, dumbfounded.  
  
“Oh, these?” Mary adjusted a pair of glasses that Klonoa was sure she hadn’t been wearing a second ago. “Don’t you think they make me look smarter?” she laughed. The huge wire-rimmed lenses didn’t serve to hide her eyes, but only made them look larger and highlighted how they were a glowing orange now to compliment her new scales. Not that randomly appearing accessories made much of a difference when she kept changing species.  
  
“You wait here for just a minute while I talk to them. Oh, boys!”  
  
Klonoa found himself released. Instead of waiting, he slipped off through the odd crowd, listening to the different conversations and just trying to take in the oddness of the world where he found himself. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been in many strange places, maybe even stranger places than this, but this was different. He couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something he was supposed to do here, and yet he couldn’t find it. Figuring out where he was supposed to start was usually the easy part.  
  
As he passed a table where a diminutive parrot perched in a strange clockwork cage and an oversized alligator woman were drinking tea, he picked up a few snatches of conversation.  
  
“... And all that just to learn you can’t even trust your own protégée. Even with immortality nothing is set in this world.”  
  
“Mm,” the alligator grunted. “Tha’s why I raise all mah own children. Put jus’ the right voodoo in ‘em zombies and they’ll never leave yah ‘lone. Now gimmie that cup, and I’ll read the leaves.”  
  
Even that snatch of conversation was strangely sad, not for the alligator now detailing the apparent horrors found in her companion’s tea leaves while he protested at the sheer unscientific nature of her practice, but the thought of being abandoned and alone.  
  
Klonoa felt it again, like a ripple over his mind. He wasn’t imagining it. Someone was calling for him, and the voice was familiar. It almost felt like...  
  
Pausing to collect himself, Klonoa pictured in his head the reunions he had witnessed. He could see the happiness that had made those hedgehogs and their friends ignore everyone else around them. They had acted as if they had never expected to truly see these precious people again. And then he echoed the badger’s words in his mind. ‘They won’t remember.’  
  
A pang of sadness accompanied that thought, and inside it was the voice that Klonoa was looking for. It was a sound of sorrow, and it was calling to him.  
  
Where was it coming from? It seemed to be echoing down from somewhere above. Klonoa had to keep searching around in his mind and dragging out painful thoughts just to ‘hear’ it, trying to orient himself towards the source. Every dream that he had seen go wrong, every world in distress, every friend left behind, Klonoa focused on a montage of unforgettably painful things, and he had never realized his adventurous life held so many painful things, just to keep hearing the echoing that wasn’t truly a sound.  
  
There were stairs to the side of the bar, and he followed them upward, past the open hangers holding airships of all different shapes. One, two, then three floors up he followed the feeling. There he found a maze of narrow hallways, all sterile white and scrubbed clean, with endless doorways and signs in a nonsensical language pointing him this way and that.  
  
And there he was close enough to finally recognize the voice. It had been clearer when its whisper had called him into another dream, into Lunatea, but faint as it was he knew this voice. This was the King of Sorrow.  
  
Realization made the voice suddenly clear, as if he had finally found the frequency to pick out the words. The King of Sorrow was calling to him, sobbing out his name into the silence over and over, and finally Klonoa knew how to listen.  
  
He practically flew down the hallway towards the source, ears flapping behind him as he ran. It was no puzzle to find where the voice was coming from, just a few sharp corners and into a doorway like any other, and there...  
  
There was the child-king of Lunatea’s Kingdom of Sorrow, just as Klonoa remembered him. He was curled in a miserable ball in the far corner of the room, face hidden in his knees as he shook with silent sobs. His huge ears wrapped around his body as if to hide him, but there was no way Klonoa could have failed to recognize him.  
  
Klonoa didn’t hesitate to approach the weeping child. Crouching beside him, Klonoa lifted one protective ear out of the way so he could lay a steading hand on a narrow shoulder that shook with silent sobs.  
  
The King of Sorrow lifted his head, his eyes completely red from crying. His voice was almost too hoarse to hear even in the silence, but he let out a strained whisper, “Klo’oa?”  
  
The soundless voice at the back of Klonoa’s mind evaporated into nothing as he embraced Sorrow’s fragile form, letting a tear-soaked face press into his shoulder and smoothing back huge ears. The thin body in his arms no longer shook with sobs, but with deep gasps of breath that sounded only a shade away from weeping.  
  
There was no doubt in Klonoa’s mind: This was the reason he had been called to this in-between world.


	4. In the Midst of Emotion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's the even longer second half, at last! I'll leave some author's notes at the end, but for now: read on!

Klonoa had a lot of practice saving people, even saving them from themselves, but he was quickly finding out that taking care of someone was a little different. Hugging the young King of Sorrow had been almost the same reflex as catching him when he fell, and that was fine. After a minute, however, it began to feel more than a little awkward.

Sorrow was clinging to him with more strength than Klonoa remembered him having after their last fateful encounter. His fur was so soaked with tears that his face was leaving a damp spot on Klonoa’s shirt. One of his huge ears had somehow gotten draped over Klonoa’s shoulder and down his back, so heavy that Klonoa got the impression those oversized ears weighed more than the rest of his frail body put together. They were the same size, so why did the shivering form he held seem so insubstantial?

As he tried to pat soothingly at Sorrow’s back, it finally occurred to Klonoa to wonder if there was even anything he could do to help. He’d made sure the King of Sorrow, or at least the sorrow he represented, would live on unforgotten even if Lunatea’s Kingdom of Sorrow lost its last survivor. Now, even outside of that kingdom, he wondered if this sad creature could even feel anything else.

No, he must be able to feel other emotions. Even before, hadn’t he found it in him to feel anger? And maybe, Klonoa hoped, even a little bit of relief?

At long last Sorrow lifted his head to whisper, his voice softer than a whimper, “You found me.”

Klonoa could only give a sheepish smile in response. It wasn’t as if he had known where to look.

Sniffling and wiping at his face with one hand, Sorrow climbed out of Klonoa’s lap. Once Klonoa was finally able to take a proper look around the room, he realized it was decorated very strangely. The walls were of weathered stone that didn’t match the blank starkness of the hall outside, with sand drifted in the corners. A bed–or perhaps a low, wide throne–practically grew from one wall, framed with wrought iron like fossilized vines and draped in black sheets. The oppressive nature of the room was somewhat undermined by a dozen lines strung across the ceiling, each decorated with brightly colored squares of cloth.

It wasn’t until Sorrow pulled one of the bright cloths from its place on the line and blotted his damp cheeks with it that Klonoa realized they weren’t decorations. They were handkerchiefs, at least a hundred of them, perhaps all of them drying from the King of Sorrow’s tears.

Klonoa took off his own shirt, the front of it had gotten uncomfortably wet with tears, and tossed it up to hang with the multitude of handkerchiefs. He fluffed up the fur on his chest with one hand, trying to make it dry faster.

When he looked back Sorrow was watching him over the hem of his handkerchief, the bright pink cloth failing to soften the bloodshot hue of his eyes even a little. The only sound in the room was a shy sniffle that threatened more tears. This was nothing like the presence completely saturated in sorrow and intimidating power that Klonoa had faced before. All he could see now was a terribly sad, lonely boy his own age staring back at him.

A cheerful grin came easily to Klonoa’s face. He held out a hand for Sorrow to take. When those wide eyes only darted nervously down to his hand and then back to his face, as if Sorrow had never been offered a friendly hand in his whole life, Klonoa closed the gap between them himself. He grasped Sorrow’s hand and drew him closer before starting to lead him out the door.

“Let’s go!” Klonoa suggested cheerfully. He couldn’t stand to sit still in this strange room forever, but he certainly wouldn’t leave Sorrow all alone, not after finding him again.

“But...” Sorrow was tripping over his own feet, startled and confused by Klonoa’s insistent tugging. “Where?”

“Anywhere we want.” The answer seemed obvious. It didn’t matter where. There was a whole world to explore, and he definitely couldn’t leave someone who was already sad behind in such an oppressive atmosphere.

Sorrow dragged his feet, but only until Klonoa had pulled him as far as the hall. As soon as he was through the doorway he abruptly stopped resisting. With a few steps he collided with Klonoa, then clung to Klonoa’s arm, face pressing into his shoulder.

“I’ve never been outside...” he whispered. His voice was shaky, uncertain, even frightened, just at being taken outside of that small room. Klonoa couldn’t begin to understand landing in a new world and not immediately looking around for an adventure. Could you be cooped up alone so long that you stopped thinking of anything but sadness and solitude? It was a frightening thought.

“Then it’s time you got to explore. I’ll be right by your side, so there’s nothing to worry about!” Klonoa promised.

They moved slowly at first, walking down the blank, white hallway hand-in-hand until Sorrow lifted his face enough to peer silently around. The only distinct features around them were the doors, and even then many were so nondescript that only the cracks at their edges showed they weren’t part of the wall itself. Some of them large enough to touch the high ceiling or wide and low, or cut in odd shapes. Some were immobile monuments of weathered metal, and some made up of thick crossed bars like jail cells, with only darkness beyond. One door was actually strings of brightly-colored beads that rang together like wind chimes, though there was no wind in the hallway to move them.

Many of the doors, Klonoa found now that he wasn’t racing headlong after the voice in his head, were open. They passed by the room where the third hedgehog, Shadow, had been sent. Instead of a room, it looked as if the door opened to the outside. There was a carpet of flower-sprigged grass and an unfamiliar night sky stretched overhead with sharp, static stars that failed to twinkle. A blue planet hung huge and close in the sky, shining like a full moon on the pair sitting quietly together. They had their backs to the doorway, so that Klonoa couldn’t see much of Shadow’s friend but a waterfall of blonde hair and a blue dress. Klonoa left them alone.

After coming this far down the hallway and seeing there was nothing terrible waiting for him, Sorrow was starting to look around rather than simply clinging as if Klonoa was his shield. Klonoa started to walk faster, never letting go of Sorrow but urging him along until he finally broke into a jog for the sheer joy of moving. He pulled Sorrow with him past a blur of doorways until they were out back at the stairway.

Klonoa might have liked to climb higher and explore somewhere new, but he could only find the original stairs he had climbed to find Sorrow. That was almost as good, he decided as he led the way back down. He was pretty sure they could get something to eat downstairs. If Sorrow had been hiding all alone in that room since Klonoa had last seen him, he must be starving by now!

The canteen was just as noisy and crowded as Klonoa remembered. He felt Sorrow draw close against his back, peering uncertainly around him. Klonoa did pause to wonder if being surrounded by other emotions might be harmful to Sorrow, even though he felt like flesh and blood.

“Are you okay?”

A silent nod was the only answer.

“Then let’s go eat.”

As Klonoa was looking around for an unoccupied table that would be a comfortable size for them, he spotted a familiar face (or, more accurately, the back of a familiar head) at the bar. Klonoa trotted in that direction, weaving in and out of the crowd until his call of, “Gantz!” could be heard.

Ear pricking up, Gantz shifted to look over as Klonoa hopped up onto the stool next to him. Sorrow took the next seat, pulling it closer before climbing up so that he was still close enough to touch Klonoa’s arm.

“Well, guess you had to show up here sometime,” Gantz greeted before turning his attention back to the bartender. At least, Klonoa guessed that was the bartender. It looked like a floating ball of cloud that kept shifting and rolling on itself, and didn’t even have a face that Klonoa could see. “I’ll have another. This isn’t for brats,” he added, before Klonoa could put in a, ‘me too.’

The cloud-bartender contracted on itself with a cheep that sounded like acknowledgment, then drifted up over Klonoa’s head with a series of little chirping noises that trailed up in tone, like the ending of a question.

“I want a hamburger,” Klonoa tilted his head back to speak up into the cloud. “Or two. Bring two, please!” he added, for Sorrow as well.

Sorrow didn’t ask for anything, and only ducked when the cloud swooped over his head.

“What was that?” Klonoa asked, once the cloud have finished its lap over their heads and looped out of sight behind the bar. He braced his hands on the counter to peer over after it, only to find he couldn’t even see the floor on the other side. For all he could see the other side dropped away into darkness.

Gantz shrugged. “They just live here. Ol’ No-eyes convinced them to take care of the travelers.”

When Klonoa looked around he realized there were dozens of similar cloud creatures all around the room, outnumbering any other species there. They were mostly small and grey, so he hadn’t noticed them before among the vibrant mix of fur and scales. A couple had rippling colors mottled through their ever-changing forms.

“As far as anyone can tell, they like emotion, or something like that. So half the time they’ll bring you the best food you ever had, just to hover around your head while you enjoy it. If you don’t mind that, it’s a pretty sweet deal.”

Klonoa perked up when the cloud bobbed back up over the edge of the counter. It had leveled out on top to balance a platter with two delicious-looking hamburgers. It floated for a second right in front of Klonoa’s face, then suddenly seemed to become insubstantial so that the platter fell through it to land on the counter in front of Klonoa.

“This looks great! Here, you eat yours too.” Klonoa moved the platter over so that one of the burgers was in front of Sorrow.

“You got lucky,” Gantz informed him. “The rest of the time...” he trailed off because his drink arrived at just that moment, with a dingy sock sharing the glass.

Gantz plucked the sock out, holding it between two claws, and just looked at the cloud hovering expectantly in front of him.

“You weren’t getting enough disdain in your diet?”

Klonoa couldn’t help laughing, and the cloud trilled with glee along with him. Bright colors flashed through its vaporous form, like self-contained lightning. Gantz was not nearly so amused.

Klonoa checked his burger for socks before biting into it.

Gantz looked like he was going to weather the prank without losing his cool, but then he suddenly looked around behind them and became agitated. He jumped out of his seat and quickly moved away without either a goodbye or an excuse, leaving Klonoa blinking after him in confusion.

Then Mary took his spot. She was back to her cabbit form, her fur now shining silver with violet streaks and highlights along the edges of her long ears. Klonoa couldn’t have even said how he knew it was her. He just took one look at her and recognition snapped into place as if she had always looked like that.

“You found him!” She greeted happily. “I can always tell when someone’s being called, even if they don’t know themselves yet.”

“Uh...” Klonoa couldn’t find words to reply.

He found himself taken by surprise with a sudden realization of how attractive she was. It had snapped into his brain as suddenly as the recognition, even though he was sure he’d just thought she was weird before. At least, he was almost sure... it was suddenly difficult to concentrate. Now he was noticing the way the light made rainbows in her eyes and shone through her long fur so that it glowed, as if someone was narrating these details in his head. He couldn’t make himself look away.

“Klonoa?” she purred, her lips pressed into a soft pout. She batted her long eyelashes at him, and somehow this was charming instead of just weird.

“I... Um...” Klonoa’s tongue felt thick in his mouth. He’d never felt so awkward before in his life.

While Klonoa was trying to wrestle his brain around into making sense, Mary suddenly froze where she sat, tears welling up in her huge, violet eyes.

“What are you... ? Stop it!” she cried, tears flowing down to dampen her soft cheeks.

Klonoa felt a pang of sympathy so strong it was like a tangible force, and he didn’t even know why she was crying. At least he was finally able to look away.

When he shook his head to clear it, he saw Sorrow hunched over in his seat, glaring holes in Mary. A thick miasma of pain and grief hung over him, so potent that Klonoa could actually see it forming an aura around him. And, Klonoa belatedly saw, the same aura was settling over Mary.

“Stop that!” Klonoa echoed. The feeling of sympathy was eclipsed by horror that Sorrow was using his powers on someone.

As Klonoa was about to grab at Sorrow and make him stop, Mary gave a loud sob that sounded suspiciously like, ‘You’re so mean!’ and jumped off of Gantz’s seat to run away through the crowd, tears still streaming down her face.

The strange narrated thoughts and feeling of acute sympathy disappeared from Klonoa’s mind the minute she was gone. Rather than trying to scold Sorrow, he braced his hands on the counter and shook his head so hard that his ears flapped. He felt like there had been a strong buzzing in his ears that he was only aware of now that it had stopped.

A firm hand clapped him on the back, and Klonoa looked up to find Gantz had re-joined them.

“Buck up, kid. You were out of character for a minute there.”

“Uh?” Klonoa still felt a little out of it when Gantz pushed a glass his way. He took a drink and choked before wondering if this was the same drink that had arrived was a sock in it. “What happened?”

“She has that effect on everyone. You’ll get over it.”

One of the clouds perched on Klonoa’s head, crooning softly at him. It tickled like faint static through his fur. He tried to duck away from it, but it dipped and moved with him.

“Get off!” Klonoa tried to shoo the cloud away, but his hands passed right through it, which only left his palms tingling. After the strange whatever-it-was with Mary, he didn’t want anyone else messing with his state of mind.

“Chill out. Those things are harmless.”

“Are you sure?” Klonoa hunched his shoulders, trying to peer up at the cloud perched on his head.

“I think I know a threat when it’s right in my face.” Gantz paused, looking around Klonoa’s shoulder. “Although, there might be a problem with your friend over-exerting himself.”

Klonoa whipped around to face Sorrow again and found him surrounded by a dozen of the same cloud-creatures. He was hunched up in a frightened ball, obviously projecting his powers with everything he had. His force field, a much smaller version of the one Klonoa remembered, was keeping them from touching him, but they crawled inescapably over it. They flashed with muted hues of dark blue and purplish red and black in response to the powers he was trying to use to keep them at bay, like a mass of sentient bruises.

“Leave him alone!”

Klonoa tried to force them away and broke through the shield. It was no more substantial than a soap bubble, but passing through it gave him a sudden recoil of pain, like a lump of tears catching in his chest, that almost stopped him cold. He put one arm over Sorrow’s shoulders, trying to make him stop using the powers that were attracting those things to him, or at least help to shield him from the swarm.

Sorrow let out a sudden gasp, the miasma of sadness around him fading and drifting away almost immediately. He looked up at Klonoa with wide eyes, lower lip trembling as if on the verge of tears, then practically flung himself into Klonoa and started clinging to him once again.

“Wah!” Klonoa could only catch Sorrow, awkwardly failing to hold him back from the hug.

The cloud-creatures were no longer rolling with the colors of an angry bruise, but now flashed with streaks of vibrantly bright colors. Klonoa could swear there were many more hovering around now, all intent on the both of them.

Now Klonoa was really starting to get ticked off. The place was confusing enough on its own, but he didn’t like the idea of people trying to mess around in his head, and now he had a friend clinging to him in apparent fright, trembling, face buried in his chest fur, and he’d had enough. These things needed to back off, right now.

Klonoa grabbed at the ring he always kept with him and shot a wind bullet into the nearest cloud, one that was trying to coil up around Sorrow’s back. It puffed up like a Moo, with huge eyes suddenly appearing from its wispy folds as it swelled into a round balloon. Klonoa whipped it around and fired it at another cloud at random.

Instead of disappearing with a satisfying ‘pop’ the two exploded in a mass of sparks and mist for a second before gathering themselves back up into the same round cloud shapes as before. They didn’t seem to be any worse for wear, circling around each other with curious high-pitched noises before drifting up close to Klonoa again.

“How do I make them go away?” Klonoa wasn’t used to fighting with someone hanging off of him, and now his usual attack didn’t work!

“Calm down. They only think you’re interesting if you react,” was Gantz’s advice, though Klonoa couldn’t help noticing he was staying well out of the way.

He could be calm. It wasn’t like he was frightened of the cloud-things so much as irritated at them for scaring his friend, but there was the real problem. No matter how hard he tried not to give them a reaction, Sorrow was the one who had attracted them with his powers, and now they were swarming around because of his fear.

Klonoa tried a few comforting pats on the back, and an awkward repeat of the, “Calm down,” advice, but that didn’t have much effect.

He pushed Sorrow back, making him look up so that they were eye-to-eye.

“They’re not gonna hurt you. I won’t let them! So don’t be scared, and they’ll all go away,” Klonoa explained firmly. He was still trying to fight back, unwilling to lose, so the words came out all in a fierce rush. He didn’t know what else to say.

At least Sorrow stopped trembling, but now he was blushing so brightly that Klonoa could see it through his fur. With those wide, trusting eyes fixed on him, Klonoa found himself blushing as well, for no reason at all!

It definitely wasn’t helping chase the creatures away. At this point Klonoa was pretty sure they had attracted every last one in the room. When Sorrow wiggled closer to him again they reacted in unison with a sigh that sounded suspiciously like, ‘aww...’

Klonoa felt his eye twitch. They were never going to go away now! Not with Sorrow making him so embarrassed. Gantz was no help, outright laughing at his situation. He resorted to the wind bullet again, flinging the creatures in all directions instead of at each other. They went whizzing off whatever direction he sent them with cries more like a gleeful, ‘wheee!’ than anything else.

Maybe they would have come back to swarm them again, but Klonoa accidentally hit an extremely slinky-looking lizard lounging at a nearby table, making him spill his drink on his green suit.

Klonoa could swear the lizard yelled, “My greasy sweet suit!” throwing up his hands, and by extension throwing the remains of his drink all over his tiger companion, who did not take this soaking gracefully. There was a snarl that could only be managed by a particularly enraged big cat, and before Klonoa could even sheepishly hide his ring the two combatants on the floor were being joined by those at the tables they crashed into in a growing mass of fighters.

At least the commotion attracted the rest of the cloud creatures away. The only one that remained was perched on top of Klonoa’s hat, and he wasn’t about to shoot himself in the head trying to get rid of it.

Gantz was still grinning about the whole mess, but at least the commotion got out of his seat. He propped his gun on one shoulder, surveying the fray.

“Good going, kid.”

“I wasn’t trying to!” Klonoa protested.

“You didn’t have to. Stuff like this happens all the time. I livens up the place!” Gantz explained, before getting a running start into the mass of fighters.

For a minute Klonoa wanted to jump in too, unwilling to be left behind by his rival. Then he looked over at Sorrow and sighed. No fighting tournament for him today.

“Come on,” Klonoa urged. “We’ll find an adventure somewhere less crowded.”

He turned to where their hamburgers had been sitting on the counter and found they had been wrapped in a clean red-and-white checkered cloth and tied into a small bundle. The cloud that had been resting on his head sat beside the bundle, and gave a hopeful chirp when Klonoa’s eyes fell on it.

Maybe those little things weren’t all bad to have around. Klonoa grabbed the bundle in one hand and Sorrow in the other and, avoiding the brawl still going on in the middle of the room, ducked out of the canteen altogether.

Avoiding the hallway that led back to the balcony where he had first arrived, Klonoa chose a path at random and soon found his way through another high, plain hall that led to an identical, but deserted, balcony. For a minute he thought his sense of direction had failed him, it looked identical to the first balcony, right down to the low sloping area where light had puddled on the stone and formed the base of the long road.

When they climbed out onto the edge of the balcony, Klonoa could see the faint glow of light around the curve of the tower and realized that there could be several similar structures, allowing the light road to stretch out in different directions. More importantly, the same network of odd platforms stretched out in this direction as well, giving them plenty of room to explore. Maybe they would find something else interesting in this place if they searched a little.

Klonoa took the first leap. Not a difficult one, not even for someone who wasn’t used to jumping and climbing their way through fantastic, maze-like worlds. Sorrow looked after him for a moment, and even though his eyes had adjusted almost immediately to the faint light Klonoa didn’t know what to make of the expression of longing he found when he turned back to encourage his companion.

Maybe it was nothing. Sorrow set aside whatever fears he might have entertained without a word and took a running leap to join Klonoa on the first platform.

They moved through the void in tandem. Klonoa wasn’t used to having to stop after every jump and look back, finding it more normal to leap from one place to the next with the confidence of long practice. Still, he made a point not to forget he wasn’t alone on this adventure, never letting himself get more than one platform ahead of his companion. Or, more accurately, his companions, since the cloud creature was floating happily about Sorrow. Now that he wasn’t being mobbed, Sorrow seemed to have accepted their little chirping accompaniment.

In the end, it wasn’t a particularly long or difficult jump that caused trouble for Sorrow. It was simply a small mistake, stumbling at the edge of one platform as he tried to follow Klonoa to the next, that made him fall.

Klonoa dropped his bundle and dove after Sorrow without thinking, almost before Sorrow was able to let out a cry of fear at having slipped. On pure instinct Klonoa reached out with a hand to grab at Sorrow’s arm, and a wind bullet for the cloud still floating happily alongside him. The cloud ballooned up like its fellows had, and Klonoa shot it downward to propel the two of them back up to safety.

It took one last desperate flap of his ears to clear the platform, but they fell together in a small heap on the edge. If Sorrow had weighed any more Klonoa didn’t think they would have made it. Even as it was, the weight of that small body landing on top of his knocked the wind out of him for a minute.

Klonoa didn’t even have time to feel bad for using their new little friend for the double-jump before the cloud drifted back up over the edge after them. It was making a trilling noise that might have been scolding, or might have been laughter. Klonoa couldn’t be sure.

As he reached up to pat comfortingly at Sorrow’s back and try to shift him off, Klonoa was surprised to see the little cloud seem to uncurl itself. Like a turtle putting a shy head out of its shell, a round, flat face with huge eyes appeared from among the folds of cloud. It peered down at the two of them, and while there didn’t seem to be any malice in it, Klonoa found himself unnerved by the completely flat face and blankly emotionless eyes.

The instant Sorrow moved the cloud retracted its face, curling back up into a cloud again.

When Sorrow lifted his head his eyes were welling with unshed tears, in spite of all of Klonoa’s efforts to cheer him up.

“Klo’oa? Why do you always save me?” he whispered.

Klonoa pushed himself up into a sitting position, dislodging Sorrow from his resting place.

“Well, someone needed to save you,” Klonoa bluntly pointed out. That was the kind of thing he always did, that he was supposed to do, and also what he liked to do. “Besides, I like you.”

Sorrow blushed, face going red enough for his embarrassment to shine through even in the dim light. Klonoa looked away quickly, feeling sheepish. At least he didn’t look like he was about to cry, for once.

Looking for a distraction, Klonoa busied himself with unwrapping their lunch. “This is a good place for a picnic, don’t you think?”

The food was still warm, and not even a little smashed after being carried all this way. This place was weird, but it could be weird in convenient ways sometimes. Klonoa was soon able to tuck in to his delicious hamburger.

It took a minute to notice that Sorrow was eating automatically, as if he didn’t even taste his food. He just stared out into the distance.

“My turn to ask you something,” Klonoa said to get his attention. “What do you want to do now? You finished what you set out to do before, so what will you do here?”

Sorrow only looked at him in blank incomprehension. “I don’t... there is nothing for me to do.”

Klonoa frowned. “You’re not trapped in that room, right? You can at least go out and meet people.”

“I didn’t know I could leave. Before I could never...”

“Is that why you were calling me, to get you out?” Klonoa wanted to know. “I heard you. That’s how I found you.”

Sorrow shook his head silently. It seemed to take a minute for him to gather his thoughts. “I thought you would make it stop hurting. Before, it hurt. It ached everywhere. But you made it stop for a minute.”

“I... It hurt because I beat you up, huh? I’m sorry.” Klonoa hadn’t known what else to do at the time. He had wanted to save everyone.

“It’s not that. That hurt, but not like this. I was... so lonely.” Sorrow’s voice steadily dropped until it was a whisper Klonoa had to strain to hear. “When there’s nothing but loneliness it chews on you and hollows you out until you can’t feel anything else.”

“That’s not true! You can still feel. Just because you were born in the Kingdom of Sorrow, that can’t be all you can ever feel. I’m sure of it! Because everyone else in the other kingdoms, they could still feel.” Klonoa was sure of this. He had gotten to know Lolo well, after all, and her emotions had run the same honest range as anyone. Where she had been born or where they went on their adventure didn’t lock them in place.

“But there was nothing else. I couldn’t...”

Maybe he was telling the truth. What Klonoa knew of Leorina’s story suggested that she had reason to feel sorrow, had needed it, and the inability to feel it had eventually driven her to such lengths. If the emotion was truly sealed off from the rest of the world, and the child-king of Sorrow sealed away with it, maybe he had been truly unable to feel anything else. Klonoa’s heart ached at the thought. How could they have sealed him away all alone like that? Or was he the only survivor left of that ruined kingdom?

In the end it made little difference if he had been truly unable to feel. He thought he couldn’t. But he wasn’t locked away in loneliness now. Now, Klonoa thought, he could make up for lost time.

“I think you can feel other things now,” Klonoa pressed. “You felt scared just a little while ago, right? And you were angry. That proves you can feel different things. You know what? I bet you can feel happy, too!” Klonoa decided, without giving Sorrow a chance to protest.

Sorrow stared at him, uncomprehending.

“Have you ever tried to smile? I bet you have a really nice smile,” Klonoa encouraged.

“No,” Sorrow admitted.

Sorrow had a thoughtful look on his face for a moment. He widened his eyes, his lips curling into a half frown, before returning his expression to neutral. He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times. It took Klonoa about that long to realize that he was trying to smile, and he didn’t seem to know how.

Trying to smile encouragement at him, Klonoa reached out to help. He poked his fingers into Sorrow’s cheeks, pushing the corners of his mouth up into a smile. Sorrow’s eyes widened once again, and as soon as Klonoa let go the smile dropped into a look of confusion.

“It’s okay. We’ll find something that makes you happy, and then I’m sure you’ll smile without even thinking about it.”

“Klo’oa...” Sorrow sat a little closer, his wide eyes making Klonoa feel uncomfortable with their sincerity. “When you’re here, I’m not lonely. I think...”

“Yeah. You don’t have to be alone,” Klonoa encouraged.

“But you... I think I...” Sorrow kept stopping short, as if the word he wanted wasn’t in his vocabulary. He was starting to look frustrated with his inability to say whatever it was he wanted to say.

“Take your time. I’m listening.”

“Will you stay here, with me? I can’t leave,” Sorrow whispered. “I don’t want to be alone again.”

“You don’t have to be alone. Why can’t you leave here?” Klonoa challenged.

“I died.”

“Oh.” Klonoa hadn’t been thinking of that. He had never meant to kill the King of Sorrow, had honestly wanted to help him. “I’m sorry,” was all he could find to say. He stared out into the void, at the sharp splinter of Luna’s moon and the ribbon of light that wound through the far distance beneath it.

“You’re sad.”

Klonoa took a deep breath and nodded. Maybe he didn’t have a right to feel sorrow for what had happened. It was like feeling sorry for himself when it was his fault for not finding another way.

He tried to laugh it off. “Maybe I’m dead too,” he suggested.

He was uncomfortably sure that falling ceiling had flattened him before he could escape. And how could he have really been here before and not remember such a place? At least, if this was some sort of afterlife they had both been sent to, Sorrow wouldn’t be lonely anymore.

Sorrow reached for him, and Klonoa had to hold himself from flinching back with the feeling that this was some manner of revenge. But he only found his face cupped between gentle palms, wide eyes seeking his gaze, and...

It hurt, but like stretching a cramping muscle back into place. It was a horribly heavy knot inside of him that announced its presence by finally uncoiling itself. He felt an aching, bittersweet sadness, woven of thoughts of all the friends he might never see again. He would almost certainly never meet them again if he was trapped here by death, but somehow the uncertainty had been worse. The hopeful feeling that maybe, maybe this time, all while knowing never to wish for the worlds of those he cared for to be in true peril again.

He was usually so caught up in throwing himself right into his next adventure. It was often so much easier not to think about it, to keep moving forward. There would be new worlds and new friends before him, and unknown possibilities that stretched out forever.

Klonoa could only gasp at the unaccustomed pain. Tears pricked at his eyes, tears that he had not shed since waking from Lunatea. Rather than the feeling of throat and chest closing and catching in a sob, he felt as if he were relaxing, letting the feeling out.

This was all Sorrow’s doing. Even if he hadn’t already known it, he could see the faint aura of those powers blooming around them both. Sorrow wasn’t forcing the feeling on him, but somehow untangling and coaxing out the tiny scraps of sadness he had buried deep. Klonoa had never realized how a tiny ignored pang of loneliness or longing here and there could add up into so much.

Sorrow drew closer, cradling Klonoa’s face in his hands, until their foreheads pressed together. Klonoa had always thought those eyes looked tired, almost cloudy, from constant tears, but through the tears blurring his own vision he finally saw something else in that gaze. Was he imagining what he saw? He felt such a deep, enveloping understanding, taking away any embarrassment or uncertainty he might have felt from crying in front of someone else.

As Klonoa let his eyes drift closed, he felt Sorrow licking away his tears. The uncomfortable noise he made in his throat went unanswered.

He took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh, feeling a deep peace that had come with releasing the little niggling hurts he had kept bottled up inside. Even after the tears stopped, Sorrow didn’t leave him alone. A small, delicately-rough, cat-like tongue continued to groom his face with utmost tenderness, long after every last salty tear was cleaned away.

It wasn’t until Klonoa opened his eyes that Sorrow drew back, and even then he was practically close enough to rub noses. Klonoa could still see the delicate pink tip of his tongue poking between slightly parted lips, and got the feeling Sorrow would have liked to continue with his ministrations. The thought made his cheeks heat badly enough that he was sure his fur would be dry in seconds.

He had been focusing on what Sorrow could really feel, but now Klonoa realized he felt an unaccustomed affection that had been rising inside of him without him ever realizing it. He coaxed Sorrow closer, let his quiet friend lean into his shoulder so that once again one of those huge ears hung heavy down his back, and tried to cradle him into relaxation. He didn’t want to stop adventuring, but right now he didn’t want to leave Sorrow all alone, either.

He did wonder if Sorrow could feel this too, this affection that ran so deep he almost hadn’t recognized it. Surely he could. Klonoa was determined to believe he could. Just... he would certainly never feel it for Klonoa. Not after what had happened when Klonoa tried to stop him before. That went without question.

Klonoa surprised himself with a yawn. He hadn’t realized he could feel sleepy in a dream. Maybe that confirmed that all of this was truly real. He fell back on the soft platform, his eyelids already heavy with sleep.

Sorrow fell on top of him, and Klonoa could hear his whisper, muffled as if it came from far away. The words tumbled out quickly with desperation. “Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave...”

“Okay.” Klonoa thought he answered. How could he leave poor Sorrow all alone? No, he would stay until Sorrow didn’t need him anymore. But now...

Klonoa’s eyes drifted closed in sleep, but almost immediately he heard someone calling his name.

There was an insistent voice nagging at him, trying to pull him out of sleep. He knew that voice very well. Somehow he got the feeling it wasn’t the voice he should be hearing, which was odd when it was a voice he knew as well as his own.

When he pried his eyes open, Klonoa found himself blinded by bright light shining on his face. He squeeze his eyes closed again with a pitiful complaint of, “Munyaaa...”

“Come on, Klonoa. Are you gonna sleep all day?” Huepow’s voice broke in over his discomfort.

“Mmm...” Klonoa protested, but he managed to push himself upright. He was lying in a grassy meadow, the mid-afternoon sun beating down on his face. Not the home he recognized, but perhaps yet another world. His head was still swimming with confusion after whatever dream he had been caught in. Why did he feel like he was missing something?

Why did he feel like he had been expecting another voice to call out to him?

As his mind sharpened into awareness, Klonoa realized that his face was wet. He raised one hand to touch his cheeks in confusion. Tears. For some reason his fur was soaked with tears.

Why couldn’t he remember what had made him cry?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually all I have for now, since I'm not completely sure where I want to go from here.
> 
> Anyway, lately I've been wondering what it means that Klonoa is a 'Dream Traveller.' I always kind of figured that meant he goes to other worlds in his dreams, but then I heard it means he is destined to travel to places where dreams specifically are in danger. (This applies for Door to Phantomile and Kingdom of Dreams. Lunatia's veil and the Dream Champ Tournament could be the result of someone waylaying Klonoa in the midst of his usual travels, I guess.)
> 
> So now I find myself wondering: does Klonoa actually 'wake' or return home between his adventures, or does he go directly from one to the other? (This is problematic because if he only goes to the In-between at a game over it makes sense that he doesn't remember, but if he has no home he would be there when there isn't a world that needs him, and time/repetition is one of the main ways people remember the In-between on subsequent visits.)
> 
> These are things I have to figure out before I can really finish this. I really do want to give them a happy ending somehow.
> 
> I also have a bunch of notes on the In-between if anyone is actually interested in reading more about that. I spent way too much time on this!


End file.
